DAWN UNTIL DUSK ─ APOLLO

DAWN UNTIL DUSK

DAWN UNTIL DUSK

[ queens-hope ]

i. Overhead, the stars were veiled. I could
feel the air's heaviness. There would be a
storm tonight. The rain would be soaking,
filling up the earth until she burst her seams.
It would gush down from the mountaintops,
gathering strength to sweep away what stood
in its path: animals and houses and men. He
is such a flood, I thought.

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
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ii. They have confounded him, tied him to
a stake and baited him. I stroke the soft skin
of his forehead. I would untie him if I could.
If he would let me.
—— The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

Eleni Athanasiou can remember the day she touched the sky, bathed her fingertips in the warmth of a golden sun, basked in the glory of the rolling hills and the lullabied order of her homeland. Troy had been a haven, of a sort, in its day of glory, lathered in daylight, blessed by the giving hand of Apollo. She had felt him at dawn, his palm clasping hers but for a moment, the intimacy of god and human and the parting recollection of stained glass mortality. Fractals in his palm as from her he did part, impressing his perfect skin, kissing his flesh with a flush like blood. A promise of death. Though she knew not of its vigor, only of her gift and her trust and her magic.

Now, she mourns death's delay. The magic is rot and the blood her blanket and the daylight a wicked thing. Apollo does not visit the province of her exhile; he did not save the man which had lain, dying, in her arms like a pheasant. He had been so cruel as to forsake a saint in the morning which he had blossomed. Watched, unmoving, as the eyes of Philtatos eclipsed. Best of men, best of healers—Patroclus. Eleni had prayed, her ivory skirt licked with crimson, returning the body to its beloved. Aristos Achaion, Apollo's reflection. He had pushed her and her prayer had fizzled to nullity and the daylight had fallen upon her like Atlas' burden. The body had fallen and the soul was waiting for a release. But whose yearned more passionately? The girl, a portrait of her apprentice's remains. The half-god, clutching his lover, gnashing his teeth at the living spirit opposite him. The conscience, free from fleshly confines at last. Or, perhaps, Apollo, who remained silent among the clouds, forever reminded of Eleni's prophecy etched across his golden surface.